Fifteen People Have Tried..

 

The Dodgers, at this point, have used fifteen different people as starting pitchers this season. Some, like Walker Buehler and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, have gotten hurt. Some, like Landon Knack, Kyle Hurt and Justin Wrobleski, have been demoted. Some, like Brent Honeywell and Elieser Hernandez, were madcap ideas that didn't entirely work. And so the arrangement we have now, consisting of Tyler Glasnow, Gavin Stone, Clayton Kershaw, Jack Flaherty and Landon Knack, is the umpteenth one for the Dodgers. Forgetting for a moment that Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin and Emmett Sheehan haven't even appeared this season, that's ten guys that had to be removed from the equation in order to get to this model. And it's a new model as well, Ryder Ryan just got hurt and Knack got called back up. 

The Dodgers have enough money to solidify a great rotation. Said rotation not staying healthy is something they likely tried to prepare for. But to keep going through option after option, and landing on either inefficiency or injury every time...that's a new low. It shouldn't be happening. If the kids aren't ready, it's because they didn't expect all these contingency plans to not work. 

Jack Flaherty, in all theory, shouldn't have needed to be traded for. But the Dodgers needed rotation help, so they dealt for him. Unsurprisingly, Flaherty has been excellent so far in LA. In 2 starts he has 2 wins, 17 strikeouts and a 3.09 ERA. It's on par with his Tigers numbers, that's for sure. The worrying detail, though, like with the other fourteen, is that at some point Flaherty could get hurt. It has happened before. It may be the reason the Cardinals were so quick to give up on him last year. Flaherty is a tremendous strikeout artist who's hard to hit when he's on, but he throws so hard that he's gonna miss starts pretty regularly. The Dodgers just need to hope that Flaherty can go the rest of the season without getting injured, but is that much to ask at this point?

This team is just now getting back Mookie Betts, and playing him back in the outfield because of the lack of strong options there. They've yet to get Max Muncy back, they're without Chris Taylor, and even Ohtani's still playing through Tommy John rehab. This is as snakebitten of a team as you're gonna find, and without people like Ohtani, Glasnow, Teoscar Hernandez and Freddie Freeman playing beautifully, it'd be a lot more worrying.

But both the Padres and Diamondbacks are hot as hell right now, and the Dodgers are only slim favorites over Pittsburgh right now. There is a chance LA blows this, after everything they've spent. It may not happen, and this team could rebound like nobody else, but...there's a chance that all of this could be for nothing. And the Dodgers need to really think about that before somebody else gets injured.

Coming Tomorrow- Ironically, someone who was injured for most of 2023, and is finally reaching his former glory this year.